Those Racist Peaceniks

Seems the Republicans have learned a thing or two from the Democrats' long-held habit of equating opposition to their own favored policies with racism. Here's President Bush last week:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern," Bush said.

"I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

There are only a few folks I know of, Mr. President, who think that olive skin tones and Muslim faith are incompatible with freedom, and they tend to be rather bloodlusty and pro-war.

The argument is not that Iraqis aren't capable of a free society because they're Arab or Muslim. The argument is:

Given that there's no recent history in the region of the kinds of sustainable institutions necessary to preserve and support a free society, it's foolish and arrogant to think we can force American-style democracy on Iraq or Iran or Syria at the point of a gun, and it's ever more foolish and arrogant to think our military and civilian planners can construct a liberal democracy from little more than piles of rubble, oil revenue, and volatile ethnic strife.

It has nothing to do with race. It's history.

Remember this when the Repubicans accuse the Democrats (most likely accurately, by the way) of demagoguing race in the coming November election.